Presence is generally defined as knowing that a person is available via, for example, a certain device over a particular medium as soon as the user connects to a network. For instance, via presence information, it may be ascertained that the person is available online, and on a connected device with a certain device profile. Presence may be used to communicate the state information of a single person or a group of people or an individual entity or a group of entities. A user or entity which indicates its presence state is termed a presentity. A group of users or a group of entities which indicates a single aggregated presence state is termed as an aggregate or an aggregate presentity. For example, Human Resources (HR) group can be an aggregate presentity where the aggregate presence state can be calculated by applying some rules. The resulting aggregate presence state can be, but not limited to, “all free since 2 pm”, “all busy since 4:10 pm”, “at least one free since 3 pm”, etc. Presence is used to notify watchers in a contact list about the state of a user or a group of users, including availability, based on the filtering rules and preferences. When the user changes its presence state, each contact on the contact list is informed about the new presence state of the user based on the filtering rules and preferences. Therefore, each contact may see different presence state of presentity due to the fact that a different filtering rule and presence may apply for each contact.
Presence provides the availability of the receiver to the user who would initiate communication with the receiver prior to establishing the communication. If the user who is receiver is not available, currently voice communication may be directed to a voicemail.
Therefore, what is needed is a system, method, and computer readable medium for utilizing presence to enable presence driven communication contacts for the intended receiver when the presence state of the intended receiver shows as unavailable. More specifically, what is needed is a system, method, and computer readable medium for automatically determining the presence states of a sought individual and an individual associated with the sought individual when the presence state of the sought individual shows unavailable to accept the communication.
Further, the present invention is related to automatically obtaining and displaying presence states of a manager of the sought individual, a colleague of the sought individual, an assistant of the sought individual, a direct report of the sought individual, or any other person associated with the sought individual, in order to enable presence driven communication contacts and display them to the user who is willing to initiate the communication with the sought individual during the communication initiation when the sought individual is unavailable.